- Turkey's Underwhelming Invasion Of Libya
Turkey’s Underwhelming Invasion Of Libya
In early 2020, Libya became one of the main hot points in the Greater Middle East with stakes raised by Turkey’s decision to launch a military operation there…
On January 5, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Turkey had sent troops to Libya to support the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA). No Turkish soldiers will reportedly participate in direct fighting. Instead, they will create an operation center and coordinate operations. Erdogan pointed that “right now”, there will be “different units serving as a combatant force.” He didn’t say who exactly these troops would be, but it is apparent that these are members of Turkish-backed Syrian militant groups and Turkey-linked private military contractors.
Ankara started an active deployment of members of pro-Turkish Syrian militant groups in Libya in December 2019. So far, over 600 Turkish-backed Syrian fighters have arrived. According to media reports, the officially dispatched Turkish troops included military advisers, technicians, electronic warfare and air defense specialists. Their total number is estimated at around 40-60 personnel.
A day after the Erdogan announcement, on January 6, the defense of the GNA collapsed in Sirte and the GNA’s rival, the Libyan National Army (LNA), took control of the town. Several pro-GNA units from Sirte publicly defected to the LNA with weapons and military equipment, including at least 6 armoured vehicles. With the loss of Sirte, only two large cities – Tripoli and Misrata – formally remained in the hands of the GNA. Misrata and its Brigades in fact remain a semi-independent actor operating under the GNA banner.
From January 7 to January 12, when the sides agreed on a temporary ceasefire proposed in a joint statement of the Turkish and Russian presidents, the LNA continued offensive operations against GNA forces near Tripoli and west of Sirte capturing several positions there. The GNA once again demonstrated that it is unable to take an upper hand in the battle against forces of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar.
The GNA formally requested “air, ground and sea” military support from Turkey on December 26th, 2019, in the framework of the military cooperation deal signed by the sides in November. On January 2, 2020, the Turkish Parliament approved the bill allowing troop deployment in Libya. This move did not change the situation strategically. Even before the formal approval, Ankara already was engaged in the conflict. It sent large quantities of weapons and military equipment, including “BMC Kirpi” armoured vehicles, deployed Bayraktar TB2 unmanned combat aerial vehicles at airfields near Tripoli and Misrata, and sent operators and trainers in order to assist GNA forces.
Turkey could increase military supplies, deploy additional private military contractors, military advisers and special forces units, but it has no safe place to deploy own air group to provide the GNA with a direct air support like Russia did for pro-Assad forces in Syria. Approximately 90% of Libya is under the LNA control. Tripoli and Misrata airports are in a strike distance for the LNA. Tunisia, Algeria, Niger, Chad and Sudan refuse to play any direct role in the conflict, while the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is still too far away. Egypt, alongside with the UAE and Russia, is a supporter of the LNA. Therefore, deployment there is out of question.
Turkey operates no aircraft carriers. Its TCG Anadolu amphibious assault ship can be configured as a light aircraft carrier, but the warship isn’t in service yet. It is unclear how Ankara will be able to provide the GNA with an extensive air support without endangering its own aircraft by deploying them close to the combat zone.
Turkey could deploy a naval task force to support the GNA. Nonetheless, this move is risky, if one takes into account the hostile political environment, with Egypt, Cyprus, the UAE and Greece are strictly against any such actions. Additionally, this deployment will go against the interests of other NATO member states such as France and Italy that see the expansion of the Turkish influence as a direct threat to their vital economic interests, especially in the oil business. Warships near the Libyan coast will be put in jeopardy from modern anti-ship measures. Yemen’s Houthis repeatedly proved that missiles could be quite an effective tool to combat a technologically advanced enemy. In the worst-case scenario, the Turkish Navy can suffer notable losses, and the risk of this is too real to tangible to overlook.
Another unlikely option is a large-scale ground operation that will require an amphibious landing. Turkey has several landing ships, the biggest of which are the two Bayraktar-class amphibious warfare ships (displacement – 7,254 tons). There are also the Osman Gazi-class landing ship (3,700 tons), two Sarucabey-class landing ships (2,600 tons). Other landing ships, albeit active, are outdated. With 5 modern landing ships, any landing operation will endanger Turkish forces involved, keeping in mind the complex diplomatic environment and the LNA that will use all means and measures that it has to prevent such a scenario.
In these conditions, the most likely scenario of Turkey’s military operation was the following:
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Deployment of a limited number of specialists;
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Public employment of private military contractors’
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Redeployment of members of pro-Turkish proxy groups from Syria to Libya;
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Diplomatic and media campaign to secure Ankara’s vital interests and find a political solution that would prevent the LNA’s final push to capture Tripoli. Turkey sees the Libyan foothold and the memorandum on maritime boundaries signed with the GNA as the core factors needed to secure own national interests in the Eastern Mediterranean.
This is exactly what Ankara did. On January 8, Turkish and Russian Presidents released a joint statement in which they called for reaching cease-fire in Libya by midnight of January 12. The joint statement emphasized the worsening situation in Libya and its negative impact on “the security and stability of Libya’s wider neighborhood, the entire Mediterranean region, as well as the African continent, triggering irregular migration, further spread of weapons, terrorism and other criminal activities including illicit trafficking,” and called for the resumption of a political dialogue to settle the conflict. The LNA initially rejected the ceasefire initiative, but then accepted it. This signals that key LNA supporters agreed on the format proposed by the Turkish and Russian leaders. On January 13, the delegations of the GNA, the LNA, and Turkey arrived in Moscow for talks on a wider ceasefire deal. The deal was not reached and clashes near Tripoli resumed on January 14.
Russian and Turkish interests are deeply implicated. Some experts speculated the contradictions within the Libyan conflict could become a stone that will destroy the glass friendship between Ankara and Moscow. However, the joint Russian-Turkish diplomatic efforts demonstrate that the sides found a kind of understanding and possibly agreed on the division of spheres of influence. If the Moscow negotiations format allows de-escalating the situation and putting an end to the terrorism threat and violence in Libya, it will become another success of the practical approach employed by the both powers in their cooperation regarding the Middle East questions.
The 2011 NATO intervention led by France, Italy and the United States destroyed the Libyan statehood in order to get control of the country’s energy resources. Now, Egypt, the UAE, Russia and Turkey are driving France, Italy and the US out of Libya in order to put an end to the created chaos and secure own interests.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/17/2020 – 02:00 -
- The Virginia Gun Rights Conflict: Best And Worst Case Scenarios
The Virginia Gun Rights Conflict: Best And Worst Case Scenarios
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
In my article ‘Trump Impeachment And The Civil War Scenario’, I warned that conservatives and leftists are being pushed to the brink of a shooting war using various methods of social manipulation and 4th Gen warfare, and that this conflict, if dictated by gatekeepers of the false Left/Right paradigm, would only benefit establishment elites in the long run. Internal division among the public is designed to keep us at each other’s throats while losing focus on the real enemies.
Hard line democrats and the social justice cult are merely a symptom of the disease, they are not the source of the disease. However, I also acknowledge that the rift between conservatives and the political left has become so extreme that reconciliation is almost impossible. War might be unavoidable, and the globalists love it. If they can pretend like they had nothing to do with creating tensions, and if conservatives are so blinded by anger against Democrats that they refuse to admit that some of their own political leaders (including Trump) have been co-opted, the elites win.
The danger in any civil war is that BOTH sides end up being manipulated and controlled, and that the situation is maneuvered towards an outcome that only serves the interests of a select few.
Virginia may be a test bed, a trial run for a nationwide conflagration, and if it does hit a point where state officials compel a violent response from the citizenry, then it is important that liberty advocates remain vigilant and steer clear of incompetent or controlled leaders. It is also important that they remember there is a much larger agenda at play here; the Democrats may be useful idiots fueling that agenda, but most of them are oblivious to their role. Our fight is not with the Democrats, our fight is with the globalists that influence them; the same globalists that are trying to influence us.
First and foremost we have to address the propaganda, because all wars begin first in the public consciousness. The current situation in Virginia remains a battle of political rhetoric and “fluid” interpretations of the law. Here are the arguments I’ve seen from the political left so far on the issue of 2nd Amendment Sanctuaries:
Leftists argue that sanctuary county resolutions are “purely symbolic” and have no force of law behind them.
This is a rather naive (perhaps deliberately naive) position, as it ignores the fundamentals. The force of law is either compelled by conscience, or it is compelled by violence. The law itself is meaningless without these two factors. If groups of citizens choose not to follow a law because they find it morally reprehensible, there is nothing the state can do except try to frighten them into compliance with the threat of violence. The concept of a law by itself has no energy, and claiming that something is “right” because it is now “law” is not a valid argument.
In the case of anti-gun laws in Virginia, the VAST majority of counties in the state and the people in those counties have made it clear that they will not comply. The leftists have completely ignored this fact by simply saying “They have to comply because the law says so…” This is the type of attitude that leads to war.
Leftists argue that state laws supersede county authority and there is no legal standing for sanctuary resolutions.
The problem with this argument is that it ignores the fact that constitutional protections provided by the Bill of Rights supersede ALL other laws. It does not matter if attempts are being made by state governments or the federal government to degrade constitutional rights, the people are empowered to refuse and fight against ANY laws which violate constitutional rights.
For example, Democrats often bring up the history of Jim Crow Laws as a rationale for Federal intervention in the legal affairs of states. Jim Crow laws were segregation laws passed by state governments, and in many cases there was resistance on a public level to these laws. Democrats like to cite Jim Crow laws whenever conservatives argue for states rights and 10th Amendment nullification of unconstitutional federal laws. They have conveniently memory-holed the issue whenever state laws are working in favor of their agenda.
The bottom line is this: The constitution and Bill of Rights take precedence over all other laws in the US, and if Democrats are going to use legal technicality as their foundation for draconian gun control measures, then they really have no leg to stand on. If their argument is that citizens and counties have no legal right to nullify state laws no matter how immoral or unconstitutional, then what would they say if a state government brought back Jim Crow, or legalized slavery? Virginia’s gun control efforts are no different.
Leftists assert that new laws in Virginia are “standard” because similar laws have been passed in other states.
This is the totalitarian tip-toe at work. Once an unconstitutional law is passed in California, New York or Illinois, this therefore means that the laws have become “standard” and are thus acceptable.
An unconstitutional law is an unconstitutional law. It does not matter how many states pass such a law and proclaim it normal or standard. The people of Virginia have announced en masse that they have no intention of following new gun control laws. The people have spoken, over 90% of counties in Virginia have passed 2nd Amendment resolutions with the support of the citizenry. Democrats gaining seats in an election does not give them the power to deny constitutional rights to Virginians.
Beyond this, the Virginia laws are nowhere near standard. Clearly, Virginia is being used as a testing ground for Red Flag laws in particular, which are the most concerning. Red Flag laws allow gun confiscation without due process based on ambiguous accusations backed often by zero evidence; it is prosecution and punishment without representation or defense. Red Flag gun laws are a means by which the state can violate your rights while circumventing due process.
(I will make note here that leftists aren’t the only people that are pushing for Red Flag laws. Donald Trump is a vocal supporter of them as well)
The numerous laws Virginia’s government hopes to implement set the stage for the incremental removal of all gun rights. Currently, at least four of these laws have been advanced by the Virginia Senate Judiciary committee and many more are expected to be implemented by the end of this month.
They are pushing the envelope to see how far they can move the boundary of what is “standard” when it comes to anti-gun laws. The people of Virginia know this is the agenda. It has ALWAYS been the leftist agenda (not to mention a globalist agenda) to seek out total disarmament of the population while claiming they only want “reasonable safeguards”. This is unacceptable, and will not be tolerated.
Leftists argue that law enforcement authorities that refuse to enforce new gun laws risk losing their “official immunity”.
I’m not sure that “official immunity” has anything to do with the enforcement of gun laws; it is meant to protect LEOs from civil litigation while conducting normal ministerial duties. This sounds more like a thinly veiled threat against county officials and law enforcement who refuse to comply. It is also an empty threat.
County officials cannot be compelled by the state to actively enforce unconstitutional gun control laws, nor can the state force a county to set aside funds for such an effort. In the case of county sheriffs, these are officials elected by the people of the county, and they answer to those people first, and state government second. County officials can be punished for breaking the law, but they cannot be punished for not enforcing the law to an arbitrary degree that the state sees as acceptable.
Leftists are pursuing other more aggressive avenues to enforce new gun laws.
Representatives of the state government have threatened the possible use of the national guard to force counties to comply. They have made a budget proposal for $6.5 million to form a new “sex offense and firearms investigation unit”, which they deny will be used as a goon squad to enter into sanctuary counties and enforce new gun laws by circumventing local law enforcement, much like the federal government uses the FBI or ATF to circumvent state authorities when it pleases them.
Finally, the Virginia government is also seeking at least $250,000 to be allocated to prisons, and this is directly tied to the new gun laws and the people that will be imprisoned by them.
The governor of Virginia claims that he supports grandfathering in existing guns as long as they are registered in the new state database. Of course, gun owners know from history that the first step towards total confiscation is forced registration. The mainstream media has suggested that anyone who thinks these budget changes are in preparation for arresting gun owners is a “conspiracy theorist”.
They had better be right, because the government of Virginia should know that if they did compel such actions it would be a detrimental mistake.
The national guard of Virginia is made up of the citizens of Virginia, and many of these people may not comply either. If they do, or if the state establishes an enforcement arm to target individual citizens to make examples out of them, the most likely outcome is that people will defend themselves and their constitutional rights. People on both sides might be hurt in the process.
The question then arises: Are these laws worth dying for? I can say with some authority as a long time activist in the liberty movement that the majority of conservatives are willing to risk death to protect their rights. Are state authorities willing to risk death to enforce unconstitutional laws? Because that is where this situation is headed…
Leftists claim that 2nd Amendment sanctuaries are not comparable to illegal immigrant sanctuaries.
Leftists are correct, the two situations are NOT the same. Illegal immigration is not a constitutionally protected right, and gun ownership is.
I find it fascinating that not long ago leftists and statist Republicans were arguing fervently against the idea that states and municipalities could nullify federal law. During the 10th Amendment and nullification uprisings that led to such confrontations as Bundy Ranch, these people viciously attacked anyone that supported sovereignty activism. They used to claim that the federal government was the alpha and the omega; the final word. Now, suddenly, leftists have pulled a u-turn and are attempting to assert sovereignty rights for illegals in sanctuary states and cities. Again, illegals are not afforded constitutional protections, gun owners are.
One could try to make a moral argument in favor of protecting illegal immigrants from deportation, but there is no legal argument. And, I could easily present a far superior moral argument against illegal immigration than they ever could in favor of it. I would have to write a whole other article to cover this issue in depth, but it is important to point out the double standards and hypocrisy inherent in the leftist position.
Leftists argue that this is only about Virginia.
Conservatives don’t see it that way. A conflict in Virginia will likely attract thousands of people from outside the state, because the view will be that the line is being drawn there. It may also spread beyond Virginia into other states with unconstitutional gun control measures.
Now, it’s important for conservatives, especially those that actually live in Virginia, to understand that there will be conmen and shysters who will show up out of nowhere and try to exploit the situation to elevate their own careers or public image. They will try to make as much money as they can while shamelessly self promoting. They will pretend to help while offering substandard advice and substandard training. And if the manure hits the fan, these guys will suddenly disappear as quickly as they arrived.
There will also be people who will try to steer the conflict towards a left vs right paradigm, as I noted earlier. Sanctuary counties should maintain local leadership and local representation in these matters to avoid being manipulated. If people outside the state want to help, then they should be fine with doing this under the supervision and management of the locals.
The best possible scenario would be that the state government of Virginia realizes that it’s not worth it to try to enforce unconstitutional gun laws, and that the risks are far too high to manage. They would abandon such endeavors and recognize that counties will not comply even if they try to apply leverage to them.
My suspicion is that the state will try to enforce laws quietly and incrementally at first, arresting a handful of violators and activists over the course of several months to make examples out of them while test running Red Flag laws for backdoor confiscation. They will wait for the activists to quiet down and go home.
The worst case scenario is that this is an establishment beta test for the rest of the country, and that they may WANT to start a conflict in the hopes that this will spread into a national civil war. This kind of scheme would require accelerated and violent enforcement of gun laws by Democrats in Virginia to illicit an immediate response. If this is the case, and a wider conflict is triggered, conservatives MUST NOT lose sight of the bigger picture. The globalists should be the focus of our ire; the democrats are being used. A conflict based only on political division will mean defeat for us all, and a win for the elites.
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Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/17/2020 – 00:05 - 'Mendacity, Hubris & Lies' Defined US Nation-Building In Afghanistan, Watchdog Tells Congress
‘Mendacity, Hubris & Lies’ Defined US Nation-Building In Afghanistan, Watchdog Tells Congress
A top official overseeing US aid in Afghanistan, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction John Sopko, testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, and gave a blunt insider account of the many damning issues which have perpetuated America’s longest war laid out in the recently declassified Afghanistan Papers.
He admitted that top officials had been caught lying about the true state of the war at every turn. “We have created an incentive to almost require people to lie,” Sopko told the Congressional hearing.
“There’s an odor of mendacity throughout the Afghanistan issue,” Sopko testified further. “Mendacity and hubris,” he added. Explaining the fundamental why behind the mass deception, he described a situation where those executing the war were incentivized to paint a rosy picture of how things were going to the politicians and top brass in Washington (certainly nothing new in US foreign policy, especially going back to Vietnam).
Special Inspector General for Afghanistan reconstruction John Sopko, via Stars & Stripes. “You create from the bottom up an incentive because of short time frames – we’re there for six months, nine months, or a year – to show success,” Sopko said. “That gets reported up the chain and before we know it the president is talking about success that doesn’t exist.”
One top official, former White House Afghan war czar Douglas Lute under Bush and Obama, had previously confessed as part of The Washington Post published Afghanistan Papers, “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan – we didn’t know what we were doing.” He underscored that “we didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking” after the 2001 invasion.
The documents consistently revealed the Pentagon’s manipulation on a mass scale of statistics fed to the public in order to hide the true disastrous nature of the war; as well as US leaders constantly “turning a blind eye” to large scale theft of US tax payer dollars by corrupt Afghan officials.
US aid was looted “with impunity” according to the released documents, and provide undeniable evidence that top defense officials knew years of rosy public statements were a mountain of lies.
The Washington Post obtained the internal Pentagon report after over 400 people close to the decision-making process were interviewed as part of the prior internal DoD investigation; however among those 366 names were redacted, given that as more damning testimony was given, the Inspector General deemed they should be treated as ‘whistleblowers’ and informants.
John Sopko in prior 2017 testimony before the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee, via Stars & Stripes. Among the more shocking elements of Sopko’s testimony is his outlining that US stupidity and the ‘law of unintended consequences’ actually helped the resurgence of the Taliban, especially when vast sums of money were handed out unaccountably for the sake of maintaining “security”.
“The coalition paid warlords to provide security and, in many cases, to run provincial and district administrations, on the assumption that the United States would eventually hold those warlords to account when they committed acts of corruption or brutality,” he said. “That accounting rarely took place — and the abuses committed by coalition aligned warlords drove many Afghans into the arms of the resurgent Taliban.”
And this further in another section of the testimony:
“The Afghan military – and particularly the Afghan police – has been a hopeless nightmare and a disaster,” Sopko told lawmakers on Wednesday. “And part of it is because we rotate units through that aren’t trained to do the work, and they’re gone in six-to-nine months. I don’t blame the military, but you can’t bring in a Black Hawk pilot to train an Afghan policeman on how to do police work. And that’s what we were doing — we’re still doing.”
And further, when pressed by Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman of California what an overall report card score for US nation-building in Afghanistan would earn — perhaps a D- or an F the Congressman offered — Sopko answered: “E. You showed up for class. That’s it.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/16/2020 – 23:45 - The Robots Are Coming, And They're Going To Take Over Millions Of Jobs
The Robots Are Coming, And They’re Going To Take Over Millions Of Jobs
Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,
When we get to a point where literally just about everything can be done more cheaply and more efficiently by robots, the elite won’t have any use for the rest of us at all.
For most of human history, the wealthy have needed the poor to do the work that is necessary to run their businesses and make them even wealthier. In this day and age we like to call ourselves “employees”, but in reality we are their servants. Some of us may be more well paid than others, but the vast majority of us are expending our best years serving their enterprises so that we can pay the bills. Unfortunately, that paradigm is rapidly changing, and many of the jobs that humans are doing today will be done by robots in the not too distant future. In fact, millions of human workers have already been displaced, and as you will see below experts are warning that the job losses are likely to greatly accelerate in the years to come.
Competition with technology is one of the reasons why wage growth has been so stagnant over the past couple of decades. The only way it makes sense for an employer to hire you is if you can do a job less expensively than some form of technology can do it.
As a result, close to two-thirds of the jobs that have been created in the United States over the past couple of decades have been low wage jobs, and the middle class is being steadily hollowed out.
But as robots continue to become cheaper and more efficient, even our lowest paying jobs will be vanishing in enormous numbers.
For example, it is being reported that executives at Walmart plan to greatly increase the size of their “robot army”…
Walmart Inc.’s robot army is growing. The world’s largest retailer will add shelf-scanning robots to 650 more U.S. stores by the end of the summer, bringing its fleet to 1,000. The six-foot-tall Bossa Nova devices, equipped with 15 cameras each, roam aisles and send alerts to store employees’ handheld devices when items are out of stock, helping to solve a vexing problem that costs retailers nearly a trillion dollars annually, according to researcher IHL Group.
In addition to scanning shelves, Walmart already has a whole host of robots doing such things as scrubbing floors, unloading trucks and gathering grocery orders…
The new robots, designed by San Francisco-based Bossa Nova Robotics Inc., join the ranks of Walmart’s increasingly automated workforce which also includes devices to scrub floors, unload trucks and gather online-grocery orders.
Meanwhile, Walmart has been testing “a new employee structure” which is intended to “cut down the size of its store management staff”…
Walmart is testing out a new employee structure within its stores in an attempt to cut down the size of its store management staff.
The nation’s biggest employer is looking to see if it can have fewer midlevel store managers overseeing workers, with these managers seeing both their responsibilities and their pay increase.
So the employees that survive will get a “pay increase” to go with a huge increase in responsibility, but what about all the others that are having their jobs eliminated?
Don’t worry, because in an interview about this new initiative one Walmart executive assured us that their employees “like smaller teams”…
“Associates like smaller teams, and they like having a connection with a leader. They want something they can own and to know if they are winning or losing every day. And today that does not always happen,” Drew Holler, U.S. senior vice president of associate experience, said in an interview.
Today, Wal-Mart is the largest employer in the United States by a wide margin.
But these coming changes will ultimately mean a lot more robot workers and a lot less human workers.
Of course countless other heartless corporations are implementing similar measures. And considering the fact that one recent survey found that 97 percent of U.S. CFOs believe that a recession is coming in 2020, we are likely to see a “thinning of the ranks” in company after company as this year rolls along.
Sadly, even if there was no economic downturn coming we would continue to lose jobs to robots. According to one study, a whopping 45 percent of our current jobs “can be automated”…
Here’s the truth: Robots are already starting to take jobs from hourly human workers, and it’s going to continue. Research from McKinsey found that 45% of current jobs can be automated. We need to stop avoiding the situation and create real solutions to help displaced workers.
In this day and age, no worker is safe.
I know someone that gave his heart and soul to a big corporation for many years, and then one day he was called into the office when he arrived for work and he was out of a job by lunch.
He hadn’t done anything wrong at all. It is just that his heartless corporate bosses had decided to eliminate his position throughout the entire company.
If you think that they actually care about you, then you are just fooling yourself.
Unfortunately, the job losses are just going to keep accelerating. In fact, it is being projected that approximately 20 million manufacturing jobs around the globe could be taken over by robots by the year 2030…
Robots could take over 20 million manufacturing jobs around the world by 2030, economists claimed Wednesday.
According to a new study from Oxford Economics, within the next 11 years there could be 14 million robots put to work in China alone.
And as wealthy executives lay off low wage workers in staggering numbers, that will make the growing gap between the rich and the poor even worse…
“As a result of robotization, tens of millions of jobs will be lost, especially in poorer local economies that rely on lower-skilled workers. This will therefore translate to an increase in income inequality,” the study’s authors said.
The good news is that the full extent of this ominous scenario is not likely to completely play out. The bad news is that this is because our society is rapidly moving toward complete and utter collapse.
I wish that there was an easy solution to this growing problem.
In a free market system, should anyone be trying to mandate that employers must hire human workers?
But if millions upon millions of men and women can’t feed their families because they don’t have jobs, that will create the sort of social nightmare that we cannot even imagine right now.
This is something that all of the 2020 presidential candidates should be talking about, because this is a crisis that is spinning out of control, and it is getting worse with each passing day.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/16/2020 – 23:25 - "What Is Palestine?" Bizarre 'Jeopardy!' Moment Sparks Israel-Palestine Storm
“What Is Palestine?” Bizarre ‘Jeopardy!’ Moment Sparks Israel-Palestine Storm
The Associated Press reported on possibly the most bizarre and egregious “Jeopardy!” geopolitical gaffe in the game show’s history this week:
Producers of the game show “Jeopardy!” have apologized for a clue that waded into political hot water involving Israeli control of the West Bank, saying an incorrect version of the show was sent to television stations.
The show aired last Friday. Contestants were being asked about the location of well-known churches, and when the clue “Built in 300s AD, the Church of the Nativity” was offered, Katie Needle answered, “What is Palestine?” Without hesitation Alex Trebek said she was incorrect with her opponent being awarded $200 for his ‘correct’ answer of “what is Israel?”
So @Jeopardy decided it’s the new Skyes-Picot and can just rename countries on a whim. #Palestine #BethlehemIsInPalestine @AmerZahr pic.twitter.com/OY1QkDUebP
— Chris Whitman (@ChrisWhitman11) January 11, 2020
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The show immediately faced backlash and controversy given the ancient Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, site of Jesus’ birthplace, is located in the West Bank. The AP reports:
“Jeopardy!” producers, in a statement on the show’s website Monday, said they realized the question was problematic and replaced it with another. The outcome of the game was not affected.
However, due to what “Jeopardy!” called human error, the uncorrected version of the pre-taped show was sent to television stations by mistake.
“We regret the error and we will make sure this never happens again,” the statement said.
Upon being told she was flat out wrong, the woman’s face appeared shocked and dismayed, but she seemed to immediately grasp that the show came firmly down on the ‘pro-Israel’ side of the question.
Though internationally the West Bank is considered “occupied Palestinian territory,” it remains that the ancient city of Bethlehem itself is self-administered under the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its mayor and top local government officials are traditionally Palestinian Christians.
Hey @Jeopardy – the Church of Nativity is in Bethlehem, which is located in the West Bank which – under international law – is occupied by Israel.
The occupied land is also known, under international law, as the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
— Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed) January 11, 2020
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The city itself is not necessarily even directly occupied by Israeli troops on a regular basis (as East Jerusalem is for example), but is cut off from other West Bank settlements by a massive Israeli security checkpoint along the main road leading into Bethlehem, so that Palestinians often can’t even travel to nearby Jerusalem or other places.
The clip showing the question immediately went viral on social media, with pro-Palestinian activist groups slamming the overt bias to the charged and controversial question.
The ancient Orthodox Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, built under Emperor Constantine in the 300’s. “In accordance with our rules and in the interest of fairness, we voided the clue and threw it out. We restored Katie’s and Jack’s scores to what they were prior to the clue. The outcome of the game was not affected. We then continued the game with this replacement clue,” the Jeopardy statement added.
Speaking more broadly of US foreign policy, President Trump in 2018 added fresh fuel to the Israeli-Palestine conflict by moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, and by formally recognizing the city as Israel’s capital.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/16/2020 – 23:05 - 45-Year-Old Man Caught With Child Pornography Says He 'Identifies' As An 8-Year-Old Girl
45-Year-Old Man Caught With Child Pornography Says He ‘Identifies’ As An 8-Year-Old Girl
Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
A 45-year-old man caught with child pornography had a novel defense in court; he claimed he identified as an 8-year-old girl.
Facing up to 20 years in prison, Joseph Gobrick told a judge in Michigan that he had a First Amendment right to view child porn on his computer and that he was in fact an 8-year-old girl, so it didn’t matter anyway.
“I’ve always been an 8-year-old girl, and even in my drawings and fantasies I’m always an 8-year-old girl,” said Gobrick.
After his claim that he was in fact a child and therefore immune from prosecution didn’t impress the judge, Gobrick resorted to implying that his oppressors were behaving like Nazis.
“Under the law, Auschwitz was legal,” he said, arguing, “What you’re doing here is wrong, just as Auschwitz was.”
Joseph Gobrick is a 45-year-old male sex offender in Grand Rapids, Michigan who claims that he has “always been an 8-year-old girl.” So on top of being a female child, he also doesn’t age. He has self-ID’d himself into immortality. pic.twitter.com/jssVzkhvFN
— Upnextcanadatv (@upnextcanada) January 15, 2020
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“If Gobrick can identify as a female, why can’t he identify as a female of whatever age he chooses?” asks Matt Walsh.
“At least a man who “feels like a child” can rightly point out that he was once a child, so he has some frame of reference for judging these feelings. And at least it does make sense, in the case of certain mental disabilities, to say that an adult “has the brain of a child.”
“None of this vindicates Gobrick to any extent at all, but my point is that transageism is actually more credible and makes more sense than transgenderism. It’s still bogus, but slightly less so. Age does change, after all. I will not be a 33-year-old man forever. But I will be a man forever. If my sex is a fluid characteristic, how much more fluid must my age be?”
Who knows, the way western society is heading, Gobrick’s excuse may well be accepted by courts in 5-10 years.
If Rachel Dolezal can identify as black and Caitlyn Jenner can identify as a woman having been a man for over 50 years, why not?
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/16/2020 – 22:45 - "The World Is Watching": Five Countries Demand Iran Pay Reparations To Crash Victims' Families
“The World Is Watching”: Five Countries Demand Iran Pay Reparations To Crash Victims’ Families
Perhaps this is why some Iranian sources tried to do an about-face and blame the crash of UIA Flight 752 on an American cyberattack: Canada and four other nations whose nationals died in the crash are demanding that Iran accept responsibility and – more importantly – compensate the victims’ families.
According to Reuters, Canada, Ukraine, Sweden, Afghanistan and Britain said Iran should hold a “thorough, independent and transparent international investigation open to grieving nations” in a joint statement released following a meeting in London between officials from the various countries.
Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois-Philippe Champagne
The Boeing 737-800 was struck by two missiles on Jan. 8 just minutes after taking off from the international airport in Tehran, en route to Kiev. Iran admitted on Saturday that a military missile operator fired on the plane in error, believing it might be a cruise missile (the plane was notably shot down just hours after Iran launched a counterattack on an American base). All 176 passengers & crew on board the plane, including 57 Canadians, were killed.
To be sure, ost of those traveling on the flight were Iranian students headed back to school abroad, hence the theme of the public outrage that followed Iran’s admission of guilt.
Iran has arrested those it says were responsible for the mistake.
The five countries have also asked Iran to identify victims with “dignity and transparency” and work with domestic officials and victims’ families as they seek the return of their loved ones’ remains.
“The eyes of the international community are on Iran today. I think that Iran has a choice, and the world is watching,” Canadian foreign minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said at a news conference in London.
Ministers from all five countries gathered before the presser to light candles commemorating the victims at the Canadian High Commission in London.
Of course, such a settlement would likely stretch into the 100s of millions of dollars, which would seriously cut into Iran’s budget for financing Shiite militias across the region (thanks to President Trump’s sanctions, the country is once again struggling to find buyers for its oil, limiting revenue).
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/16/2020 – 22:25 - "No, It's Not Over!" – Reading Sun Tzu In Tehran
“No, It’s Not Over!” – Reading Sun Tzu In Tehran
Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Iran is not done. General Hajizadeh, Commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force, said in a briefing yesterday that the strike “was the starting point of a great operation”. He also underlined that “the strikes were not meant to cause fatalities: We intended [rather] to deliver a blow to the enemy’s military machine”. And the Pentagon is saying, too, that Iran intentionally missed US troops at the bases. This is tantamount to the Pentagon admitting that Iran can land missiles with extreme accuracy over a distance of several hundred miles – and further, this occurred with not one missile being intercepted by the US forces. To completely avoid targeting soldiers at a large military base is no mean feat – it suggests an accuracy within a meter or two – not ten meters – for Iranian missiles.
Isn’t this the point? It suggests that advances in Iran’s guidance systems can land missiles with extreme precision. Haven’t we seen something similar happen recently in Saudi Arabia (Abqaiq)? And was it not clear from Abqaiq that highly expensive US air defence systems do not work? The IRGC satisfactorily have demonstrated that they and their allies can penetrate US manufactured air defence systems, using domestically produced ‘smart’ missiles, and by using their electronic warfare systems.
The US bases around the region – in short – now represent vulnerable US infrastructure – and not strength. Ditto for those expensive carrier battle fleets. The Iranian message was clear and very pertinent to those who understand (or want to understand). To others, less strategically aware, it might seem that Iran pulled its military punch, and showed weakness. Actually, when you have just demonstrated the ability to upend the military status quo, there is no need for a hail of trumpets. The landing of the message itself is the ‘blow’ to a ‘military machine’. Neatly calibrated: it avoided head to head-on war. Trump stood down (and claimed success).
So then, is it all over – all done and dusted? Finished with? Not at all. Both the Supreme Leader and Gen. Hajizadeh said (effectively) that the strike represented an outset – ‘a beginning’. But much of the MSM – both in the West and some in Israel – lend a cultural ‘tin ear’ towards how Iran manages asymmetric war – even when it is spelled out explicitly.
Asymmetric warfare is not a ‘dick swinging’ exercise. It is more David and Goliath. Goliath can crush David with a blow from his clenched fist, but the latter is nimble; quick on his feet, dancing around the giant – just out of his reach. David has stamina, but the giant lumbers heavily around, and is easily angered and exhausted. Eventually, even a well-aimed pebble – not even a Howitzer – brings him down.
Listen closely to the Iranian message: Should the US withdraw from Iraq, as requested by the Iraqi Parliament, and in accordance with its agreement with the government of Baghdad, and then ‘go’ from the region, the military situation will ease. However, should US insist on staying in Iraq, US forces will come under political and military pressure to quit – but not from the state of Iran. It will come from the inhabitants of those states in which the US forces presently are deployed. At this point, US soldiers may be killed (though not by Iranian missiles). It is America’s choice. Iran holds the initiative.
Iranian leaders have been very explicit: The ‘slap’ of the strike at the Ain al-Assad base is not the pay-back for General Soleimani’s targeted assassination. Rather, it is the campaign consisting of the amorphous, quasi-political, quasi-military, asymmetrical war on America’s presence in the Middle East that has been dedicated as fitting to his memory.
This is David dancing around Goliath. Soleimani’s assassination has energised and mobilised millions in a new fervour of resistance (and not just the Shi’a, by the way). And the trashing of Iraq’s sovereignty by President Trump’s response to the vote in the Iraqi parliament (calling for foreign forces to leave Iraq), has created a new political paradigm which even the most pro-American of Iraqis cannot easily ignore. It is – notably – a non-sectarian mission (removing foreign forces).
And Israel, after initial self-congratulation (amongst the Netanyahuists) has understood that Iran has ‘stepped-up’, and not ‘stepped back’. Veteran Israeli security corresponded Ben Caspit writes:
“The letter of Gen. William H. Sili, commander of US military operations in Iraq, was leaked and then rapidly disseminated among Israel’s most senior security figures on Jan 6 … The content of the letter — that the Americans were preparing to withdraw from Iraq immediately — turned on all the alarm systems throughout the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv. More so, the publication was about to set in motion an Israeli “nightmare scenario” in which ahead of the upcoming US elections, President Donald Trump would rapidly evacuate all US forces from Iraq and Syria.
“Simultaneously, Iran announced that it is immediately halting its various commitments regarding its nuclear agreement with the superpowers, returning to high-level uranium enrichment of unlimited amounts and renewing its accelerated push for achieving military nuclear abilities. “Under such circumstances,” a senior Israeli defense source told [Caspit], “We truly remain alone at this most critical period. There is no worse scenario than this, for Israel’s national security … It is not clear how this letter was written, it is not clear why it was leaked, it is not clear why it was ever written to begin with. In general, nothing is clear with regard to American conduct in the Middle East. We get up every morning to new uncertainty.””
The impeachment of the US President launched by the House, has left Trump very vulnerable to the Zionist and Evangelical rump in the US Senate, whose votes nonetheless will be essential to Trump’s bid to remain in office when the articles of impeachment move to the Senate. And to a trial where Trump must block the Democrats allying with any Republican rebels in order to achieve a two-thirds ‘guilty’ vote. The Impeachment leverage has been used several times to push Trump to act in the Middle-East directly contrary to his electoral interest – which remains contingent on keeping soaring markets – and in talk of a China Trade deal.
What Trump needs most now (in electoral campaign terms) is a de-escalation with Iran – one that would mitigate political pressure from the neo-con and Evangelical quarters, and allow him to show-case the inflated asset markets.
But this is precisely what he will not get.
Trumps’ attempts to contain the Iranian response to the Soleimani killing were unreservedly rebuffed by Tehran. The missives were never opened, nor allowed for them to be spoken by the mediators. There is no room for talks, unless Trump lifts sanctions and the US re-commits to the JCPOA. This will never happen. There will now be immense pressure from all the Israel lobbies for America to remain in Iraq and Syria (pace Caspit’s comments). And the ghost of Soleimani’s ‘revenge’ will haunt America’s forces in the region for months, if not years, to come.
Iran – wisely – has eschewed direct, state-to-state military conflict, for a more subtle, and pernicious war on the US presence in the Middle East – a war, which if successful, will re-cast the region.
No, it’s not over. Its set to escalate (but in an asymmetrical way). Trump will remain squeezed in the rogue Senators’ vice.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/16/2020 – 22:05 - Lebanese 'Week Of Wrath' Sees Banks Physically Attacked On Large Scale
Lebanese ‘Week Of Wrath’ Sees Banks Physically Attacked On Large Scale
Lebanese banks are limiting account holders to withdrawing a mere $100 of their own money at a time (and just $200 total a week) after the country’s banking crisis due to eroding liquidity and central bank’s looming default have been at the center of mass anti-corruption street protests since October of last year.
“There is a lot of anger,” one Lebanese protester told the AFP on Thursday. “You have to go to the bank twice to withdraw just $200.”
Banks and ATMs are now being targeted for vandalism and destruction by demonstrators who have declared a “week of wrath” — specifically in major cities like Beirut. It’s now been two months since commercial banks have enacted severe controls preventing large money transfers abroad and restricting clients’ access to their deposits.
Banks across Beirut have been targeted for physical attack this week. Image source: AFP These latest imposed capital controls now include limiting withdrawals to less than $200 a week, according to Lebanon’s Daily Star.
Violent clashes between mostly young protesters and policed have raged in the upscale commercial hub of Hamra district in Beirut over the last two nights. Local reports described the scene as looking like a war zone, with burning tires in debris and glass strewn streets — much of that glass from smashed bank windows.
Several bank fronts attacked by enraged protesters prevented from accessing their accounts amid a broader political and financial crisis:
The Daily Star reports the crowd attempted to storm the Central Bank building in the district:
After a month of rain, Tuesday’s protests saw the highest turnout in weeks. Following an extended stand-off in front of the headquarters of the Central Bank, protesters came into conflict with security forces that resulted in at least seven wounded.
…Several people attempted to storm the Central Bank building, breaking through the outer fence and calling for “the fall of the rule of the bank” and the resignation of Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh.
A reported 59 were arrested during the mayhem, which is likely set to continue, and has for months witnessed frustrated Lebanese physically attacking bank fronts in their efforts to get their own money out.
#Lebanon‘s protesters can no longer be called peaceful. They block vital roads & highways. They destroy bank windows & ATMs as well as throw rocks & firecrackers at security forces. And then when they get arrested, their friends are rioting in front of the police station. pic.twitter.com/oEqz78GLEN
— Walid (@walid970721) January 16, 2020
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Protest leaders have consistently accused the national and commercial banks of “theft” while the bankers attempt to defend against a massive run on currency, especially the dollar.
“What happened yesterday was a response from people who are hungry, whose money is being stolen, and economic policies that have directly led us to this crisis for years now,” Ayman, a 27-year old present for the Hamra protests told the Lebanese Daily Star.
Riots in Beirut #Lebanon tonight targeting Banks and Central Bank. Financial situation in decline and state bankruptcy nears.
Here protesters downtown smashing the window of Beirut Bank. Day 90: pic.twitter.com/5cezkouQkA
— Joyce Karam (@Joyce_Karam) January 14, 2020
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Adding to the the explosive situation is that Lebanon has been without a government since the prime minister resigned in late October amid protests so large (some 1 million people) that it brought the small country to a standstill.
Al Jazeera summarizes the situation as follows:
Compounding the situation, debt-burdened Lebanon has been without a government since Saad Hariri resigned as prime minister on October 29 under pressure from the anti-government protests.
Its under-fire politicians have yet to agree on a new cabinet despite the designation last month of Hassan Diab, a professor and former education minister, to replace Hariri.
Smashed Window Fronts, Destroyed ATMs, Graffiti-Covered Walls: Public Anger Against Cash-Strapped Banks Boils Over In Crisis-Hit #Lebanon Over Capital Controls That Have Trapped The Savings Of Ordinary Depositors. pic.twitter.com/GwRRUPT8Jl
— Ben Rickert (@Ben__Rickert) January 16, 2020
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In some cases it appears local security forces have held back or simply ignored instances of mob destruction of bank fronts (after all, the police and their families can’t access their accounts either).
Shame shame shame #لبنان_يتنفض pic.twitter.com/HWfPxHUhNS
— Gaby Awad (@gabyawad) January 15, 2020
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Meanwhile, Reuters outlines ways the country could imminently default, and possible options for barely avoiding it:
One of the possibilities to help Lebanon’s finances is to take a slice of the deposits individuals and firms hold at Lebanese banks.
The controversial measure was used in Cyprus at the height of the euro zone debt crisis. James McCormack, head of Fitch’s sovereign rating team, said that move didn’t actually trigger a default as the definition of a default is more narrowly focused on the non-payment of debt.
Though certainly the people in the streets will have something to say about taking “a slice of the deposits” held by individuals and firms.
Staying on the subject of #Lebanon‘s BoP, how is the current account deficit (25% of GDP) financed? Well, not surprisingly, the $ outflows have traditionally been covered by nonresident FX deposit inflows, portfolio inflows, and banking flows. All of which have dried up now. pic.twitter.com/jDBa04AzQG
— Nafez Zouk (@nafezouk) January 16, 2020
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“One of the most heavily indebted countries in the world, Lebanon has $2.5 billion in Eurobonds due this year including a $1.2 billion bond set to mature in March,” Reuters notes.
“But its dire finances and political crisis mean it is running out of options to avoid a default.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/16/2020 – 21:45 - Capitalism In America: How A Dismal Decimal Is Robbing Americans Blind
Capitalism In America: How A Dismal Decimal Is Robbing Americans Blind
Authored by Jon Hellevig via The Saker Blog,
There is no hiding anymore, the United States has become an oligarch owned banana republic with nukes, and with a monopoly currency which has allowed it to rig the markets for half a century. But now we are only a couple of hours from curtain – Midnight in America.
With the stock market at all-time highs, virtually no unemployment (or so they say), and brisk GDP growth (supposedly) in the last decade, economic analysts would declare that the US economy is in excellent shape. But, it isn’t. The stock market is a central bank inflated asset bubble, and what GDP growth there has been, is an illusion brought about by the very same financial bubble and by pumping the economy up with record federal borrowings to finance the deficits that America cannot afford. Rigged statistics showing artificially low inflation serve to hold together the Trumped-up American economic narrative. (About the rigged inflation statistics, see this report). And the low unemployment figure is nothing but a chimera based on misleading statistics.
In reality, the US economy is failing – and the country with it. At least two-thirds of the population has seen dramatic declines in living standards and half are back to levels of developing nations – without the development.
The big story covered up by all the happy macroeconomic figures repeated by rote by the US establishment – everybody from the president to cable television pundits and Trump fanboys – is the gradual impoverishment of the American worker. That’s an inconvenient truth increasingly difficult to hide as the American dream has turned into a nightmare for huge swathes of the population. As the figures we present below show, the rich are really getting richer, the middle class has been decimated, and half of Americans are poor and destitute of any financial wealth. The super-rich are gobbling up an ever-increasing slice of the American pie at the cost of all the rest who get nothing but table scraps on one side and leftover crumbs on the other, if anything. The resulting stratification of society has brought back a medieval servant economy, where the have-nots are doing odd jobs, cleaning houses, fetching groceries, running errands and deliveries for the feudal rich and the remaining shrinking middle class.
Thanks to the Fed (the American oligarch owned central bank) pushing easy money into the hands of the privileged elite, the super-rich Dismal Decimal – the top 0.1% – have by now amassed as much wealth as they had just before the Great Depression that started with the stock market crash in 1929. A lesson not learned. Back to square one. How will it end this time?
This article is based on an Awara Accounting study titled “Widening Income and Wealth Gap and Stagnating Wages in America.” Links and source references to all the facts presented here can be found in said study.
BTW all the data in this report is derived from official US government sources and American experts analyzing them.
During the last decades, the financial rewards from the rigged markets first flew exclusively into the pockets of Top 10%, but later it was increasingly Top 1%, which pocketed most, perfectly illustrated by below charts.
1. The income of Top 1% has grown five times as fast as that of Bottom 90% income since 1970, who now earn double the amount of income than 160 million poor of the lower 50% stratum.
The fortunes of Top 1% and Bottom 50% are now reversed.
2. Top 1% now holds as much wealth as Bottom 50% combined.
Income inequality obviously leads to wealth inequality, but here the figures are yet more striking in showing the magnitudes of the grab at the top. Since 1989, Top 1% captured $21 trillion in wealth, while Bottom 50% lost $900 billion, actually pushing them down to negative wealth, meaning they have more debt than they have assets. On a net analysis, half of Americans own nothing of real value.
3. Until the creeping coup under Reagan, income equality was improving
It was bad enough in 1995 when Top 1% earned as much as Bottom 50%, but today the richest 1% already take 20% of all income leaving the bottom half with only 12%. As the chart shows, back in 1978 – before the neoliberal creeping coup really got going – the trends were reversed. Below chart compares income growth since 1920 of Top 1% to Bottom 90% (that is, all the rest except Top 10%). We see that right after Ronald Reagan entered the presidency with his Chicago School snake oil influenced backers, the income growth of the 1% started its dizzying growth, which is continuing to this date.
4. Back in 1962, the share of Top 1% of America’s wealth at 33% was equal to that of Bottom 90%, but in the early 1980s the share of Bottom 90% started a steep descent and by 2016 their share had dwindled down to 21%. Especially after the Federal Reserve shifted its market rigging low-interest-rate money-pumping policy into high gear from the beginning of 2000s, the superrich have experienced a massive rise in their fortunes, as illustrated by below chart.
But by today Top 1% are losers compared with Top 0.1% – the Dismal Decimal – who are where the music plays.
5. Top 0.1% now holds as much wealth as Bottom 90% combined.
A recent study revealed that the concentration on the top is yet much more pernicious. It’s not any more a question of Top 10%, and not even Top 1%, as it is the Top 0.1% – the Dismal Decimal – that has now concentrated the wealth of the nation (and half the world) in their greedy hands. Top 0.1% now holds as much wealth as Bottom 90% combined. As the below chart shows, we are essentially back to the Roaring Twenties…a lesson not learned. Actually, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, America entered an unprecedented era of four decades of prosperity with a more equal distribution of wealth as Bottom 90% recovered strongly in distribution of wealth at the expense of Top 0.1% parasites.
6. Top 0.1% earnings grew 347% between 1979 and 2017, while Top 1% “only” gained 157% – the rest gained nothing
7. The next chart takes a longer perspective – while widening the sample to Top 10% – and shows their share of the total income since 1910 to 2010. The Roaring Twenties – the period before the 1929 stock market crash and the ensuing Great Depression – experienced the same level of glaring inequality as today’s America. With Franklin D. Roosevelt’s reforms the egregious average income inequality was tamed and stayed relatively low until Reagan’s fatal presidency. And it’s been downhill ever since – or uphill, if we look at it from the perspective of the rich.
8. The only economic figure that has managed to look good is the GDP, but that is so only until you bother to find out where it comes from – from the Federal Reserved fueled asset bubble and massive federal budget deficits financed by record national debts. For an excellent exposé of how rigged and debt-ridden the US economy is, I refer to my earlier report published on the Saker blog: The Oligarch Takeover of US Pharma and Healthcare – And the Resulting Human Crisis. Shortly: The US economy must be seen as a giant Ponzi scheme, which will implode sooner or later. And we are getting to that sooner part now.
Trump habitually and regularly brags about the stock market reaching another all-time high. But that’s really being out of touch with the electorate. Stock market gains exclusively flow to the rich increasing inequality and the cost of living for the rest. Thing is that, beyond the richest 10% very few Americans have a stake in the stock market. In 2016, the richest one percent held more than half of all outstanding stock, financial securities, and all other sorts of equity. The remainder of those asset categories were held by the rest of Top 10%, who owned over 93% of all stock and mutual fund ownership. What wealth the remaining 90% may own is largely residential housing, the homes where they live. According to Jonathan Tepper, the wealthiest 1% own nearly 50% of stock and the top 10% more than 81%. The so-called middle class owns only 8% of all stock.
This also kills the myth that record highs on the stock market would be good for American retirement savings – with the richest few holding all the shares there’s nothing in it for the overwhelming majority.
A recent report also showed that only 10% of Americans are invested in pension plans. That is down from 60% in 1980. And those who are, are traditionally more weighted towards bonds and money-market instruments, which suffer from the rigged markets with the artificially low interest rates. The pension savers are hence literally paying for the super gains flowing into the pockets of Top 1%. On the other hand the super low interest rates are out of grasp for the all but Top 1% who gobble up the wealth of the nation with that largesse delivered to them by their Federal Reserve. At the same time the common household is paying double-digit rates on their credit card debt traps.
9. Below Top 10% wages and total household income have been stagnant, at best.
10. Average income of the bottom 50% has stagnated at around $16,000 since 1980, while the income of the top 1% has skyrocketed by 300% to approximately $1,340,000 in 2014
11. 45% of Americans earn annually only 18,000 or less. A recent study found that 53 million Americans or 44% of the working age population earn a median average annual salary of only $18,000. Basically then, at least half of the Americans are working-poor.
12. Middle-class households had in 2015 basically the same income as they had in 1979
13. In the two decades from 1997 to 2017, only Top 5% of households saw their income increase
14. For most American workers, real wages have barely budged in decades. By end of 2018, the real inflation-adjusted average wage had about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago.
15. As the below chart illustrates, the real average hourly wage which was $20.27 in 1964 had only inched up to $22.27. David Stockman calculated that the real hourly worker’s wage was in 2019 still at 1972 levels.
16. For full-time employed men real wages have fallen 4.4% since 1973, according to economist Paul Craig Roberts.
The total average income of men at $51,212 in 2015, was lower in real terms than it had been in 1974.17. As of 2014, the average hours worked per week had fallen from around 39 hours in 1970s to under 34 hours. Economist Mike Shedlock calculated that the actual hours worked and the average hourly earnings would deliver a weekly income of $690, well below its $825 peak back in the early 1970s. If we multiply the hypothetical weekly earnings by 50, we get an annual figure of $35,497. That would in 2014 have translated to a 16.4% decline from its peak in October 1972.
18. All labor productivity growth since the 1970s have gone to the robber capitalists. From 1973 to 2013, hourly compensation of a typical (production/nonsupervisory) worker rose just 9% percent while productivity increased 74%.
19. Nowhere is income inequality and the egregious worsening trend as manifest as in the case of CEO pay. In the 1970s, CEOs made 30 times what typical workers made, but by 2017 the CEOs made 361 times the workers’ pay. According to the Economic Policy Institute CEO compensation has grown 940% since 1978, while typical worker compensation has risen only 12% during that time.
The Fed fueled financial market orgy is the main cause for the windfall riches of CEOs as stock options and the accompanying share buybacks make up a huge part of CEO pay packages. This rising pay of executives was the main factor in Top 0.1%’s super grab of household income
20. A 2017 study found that 40% of US adults struggle to pay for basic necessities like food, healthcare, housing, and utilities.
21. Most Americans have depleted all their spare resources as a staggering 78% of full-time workers are reported to live from paycheck to paycheck.
22. Nearly 70% of Americans have virtually no savings. Bottom 55% have zero savings, while the following 24% – the core of the former middle class – have only $1,000 stashed away.
23. Correspondingly Bottom 70% of Americans don’t own any real wealth (beyond rapidly depreciating durables).
24. The other side of the (non-existent) coin is that the same 50% of Americans would obviously struggle to come up with $400 for an unexpected expense. By extension, the former middle class – those with the miserly savings of $1,000 – would also have real troubles in coping with any kind of bill for medical treatment without dipping into more debt. Considering the above reported findings (see the chart) only the Top 10% would be financially secure in a medical emergency.
25. According to shocking findings by the American Cancer Society, 137.1 million US residents suffered medical financial hardship in 2018. Americans had to resort to borrow a total of $88 billion in 2018 only to cover for essential medical treatment.
26. A third of young adults, or 24 million of those aged 18 to 34, lived with in their parents’ home because they cannot afford a home of their own.
27. The income and wealth gap pictures get worse yet when we look at the age distribution of wealth. Younger generations are earning less and own next to nothing (that is, if you are not the golden youth of the 10%). Baby Boomers born between the end of the Second World War and 1964 currently hold wealth that is 11 times higher than that of millennials.
Median Income for Younger and Older Families in Inflation-Adjusted Dollars
28. The number of full-time jobs with life-sustaining wages – what economist David Stockman calls breadwinner jobs – have not been growing since 2000, by 2014 their number was still 3.5 million or 5% lower than it was at the peak in early 2001. In the same period 4 million part-time and gig jobs were created.
While the official unemployment figure is presently near historical lows – and at levels what some economists would like to call full employment – there are some big problems with it.
1. Problems with the official unemployment statistics. The officially touted unemployment figure (so-called U3 unemployment) record only those who have been looking for a job during the last 4 weeks, while discouraged long-term unemployed are cleansed from the statistics and left unrecorded as if they would not be in the workforce at all – makes stats look beautiful for the powers that shouldn’t be.
2. The labor participation rate has been falling.
3. New job creation has amounted to only a third of the annual increase in working age population.
4. Part-time and gig jobs count as full-time employment. Any person who takes a part-time or gig job for just a few hours a month is recorded among the employed, although they would rightly be considered unemployed merely clutching at straws.
5. Connected with the previous point, there is also a more general problem with the quality of jobs created. Most jobs created in the last two decades are low-paid low-skill jobs that do not provide a life-sustaining income considering the cost of living in the United States.
More than one third (36%) of U.S. workers are in the gig economy, doing part-time work or side hustles for companies like Uber, Lyft, Etsy, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Freelancer.com, Ebay or just any odd job they can get from time to time.
29. To make up for the shrinking earnings, the regime is pushing the American population into 21st century debt peonage. Ensnared in the debt trap, US households had nearly $14 trillion in outstanding debt at the end of the third quarter 2019. That debt load now equals 73% of GDP. By end of 2019, consumption debt alone (not including asset acquiring mortgages) was up by $2 trillion since 2014.
Since 2004, the weight of the student loan millstone has gone up fivefold from only $250 billion to today’s $1.5 trillion.
That’s due to the huge price inflation in higher education. The cost of both public and private college escalated by 40% over the general consumer price inflation between 2005 and 2015.
30. Because of the huge rise in the last few decades in cost of living in the US, in Russia, you get the same standard of living for a fraction of the American cost. A Moscow average monthly salary equal to $1,600 (annual $19,200) gives the same purchasing power as a monthly salary of $6,000 in Chicago (annual $72,000). Meaning, you live in Moscow (at least as well for a monthly paycheck of $1,600 as you live in Chicago for a paycheck of $6,000. For details, see this report.
31. The present oligarch controlled rigged crony capitalist system has killed the American dream, the belief that anyone, regardless of parents’ social status and incomes can attain success and wealth by hard work and ingenuity. The gates for upward mobility have been shut for the overwhelming majority. The monopolization of practically all sectors of the economy, the ever increasing bureaucratic restrictions on doing business, the extreme concentration of ownership, and the rigged financial markets have made it increasingly hard for people outside the top echelon of penetrating the financial membrane protecting the elites. A 2017 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland found that the probability that a household outside the top 10% made it into the highest tier within 10 years was twice as high during 1984-1994 as it was during 2003-2013.
The United States is an oligarchy
This concentration of the income and wealth on the top, proves that the United States is an oligarchy. A 2014, study by Princeton University demonstrated how the US is a political oligarchy. With this report showing the insanely widening income and wealth inequality, my aim is to show, that the country is an economic oligarchy, too. In fact, economic super riches are the precondition for their political power, too. In America, as always, the oligarchy has achieved their uncontested power in a hermeneutical feedback loop, where the initial wealth of the superrich has bought them increased political power, which has given them increased riches, which has bought them more political power, and so on, until today, when they own practically the whole economy and the entire government. Clearly the source of higher inequality has been Fed policies, which has pushed cheap money into the pockets of the already rich, who have exclusively then benefited from soaring stock and real estate prices.
Fittingly, we got end of 2019 a report revealing that the world’s richest people increased their wealth in the year by $1.2 trillion, a staggering 25%, most of which belong to the oligarchs of the United States.
The question – which I have set to explore in my series of Capitalism in America – is whether there has been a game plan, a long-term strategy or whether intermittent achievements have just spurred the oligarchs on to new economic and political power grabs in the course of establishing their totalitarian rule. I tend to think, there has been a long-term plan ever since the establishment of the Federal Reserve. The economic and political history of the United States provide so much circumstantial evidence, which supports the view that there has been a conspiracy of the Wall Street elite. I shall return to this hypothesis in further installments to this series of Capitalism in America. It is however clear – whether through a long-term plan or by a series of ad hoc interventions – the US financial elite has by now completed a creeping coup, which have delivered them absolute economic and political power.
* * *
In my investigation of the oligarchization of America – the creeping neoliberal oligarch coop, which set in full force since Reagan – I have so far completed these instalments:
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The first installment was a study showing how all corporate ownership has been concentrated in the hands of the oligarchy, titled Extreme concentration of ownership in the United States
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The second part was a study revealing how the oligarchy has totally taken over US media, titled The Oligarch Takeover of US Media
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The third installment was a report published on the Saker blog titled New World Order in Meltdown, But Russia Stronger Than Ever
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The fourth installment, The Oligarch Takeover of US Pharma and Healthcare was also on the Saker blog.
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Next due is a report showing how from point of view of political science the oligarchy has destroyed the social fabric of the US economy and deliberately enacted laws that favor the few over the people. Of particular interest here is how the oligarchy has rigged the political system by institutionally solidifying the mendacious Janus- faced two-party system in order to remove any potential challenge to their rule.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/16/2020 – 21:25 -
- China Growth Slows To 29 Year Low In 2019 Despite Q4 Rebound
China Growth Slows To 29 Year Low In 2019 Despite Q4 Rebound
With phase-one talks completed in October (and signed this week), tonight’s Q4 GDP and December smorgasbord of data is being keenly watched by the market for any signs that China’s massive credit stimulus has actually done any good at all.
Ahead of tonight’s key China data dump, State Grid, China’s largest utility company, has warned the rate of economic growth in the country could plunge to 4% within the next four years, according to internal forecasts.
“We were upbeat about China’s power demand five years ago because the economy was still robust and 7 or 8 percent GDP growth was the bottom line,” the official said. “No one expected growth to decelerate so sharply.” He warned that 4% growth by 2024 was the utility’s worst-case scenario.
And despite a YoY rise in China’s credit impulse, shadow financing continues to contract, while loans in the banking sector expanded, but not enough, expectations are for 6.0% GDP growth in Q4, the same as Q3…
Source: Bloomberg
The jump in credit is a year-end headfake however, and thus is not expected to be sustained…
Source: Bloomberg
But expectations for the rest of the China data is to slide from impressive November data (that lifted the ECO surprise index)…
Source: Bloomberg
Despite plenty of volatility, Q4’s average for offshore yuan was modestly weaker than Q3…
Source: Bloomberg
But the Chinese stock market refuses to play along with the credit impulse…
Source: Bloomberg
Ahead of the print, we note that the two manufacturing purchasing-manager indexes indicated that activity was picking up that month; and exports and imports also both gained.
So, with the trade-deal finally signed (whatever that means), are tonight’s December (and Q4 data) signaling optimism?
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China Q4 GDP YoY MEET +6.0% vs +6.0% exp and +6.0% prior.
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China Dec Industrial Production YoY BEAT +5.7% vs +5.6% exp and +5.6% prior.
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China Dec Retail Sales YoY BEAT +8.0% vs +7.9% exp and +8.0% prior.
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China Dec Fixed Asset Investment YoY BEAT +5.4% vs +5.2% exp and +5.2% prior.
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China Dec Property Investment FELL YoY +9.9% vs +10.2% prior.
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China Dec Surveyed Jobless Rate WORSENED 5.2% vs 5.1% prior.
Source: Bloomberg
Dec. industrial output grew faster than all 41 estimates (with grain output reached a record high in 2019 as pork output fell 21.3% last year).
Bloomberg notes that within retail sales, “daily use” items saw weaker gains, while tobacco and alcohol accelerated. Jewelry spending saw its best gain since June, so it seems like Chinese consumers were opening up their wallets for non-necessities last month.
Amongst all data releases today what caught ANZ Chief Economist Raymond Yeung’s attention is surveyed jobless rate which rose to 5.2% from 5.1%. For such a big country with more than 400m urban employment workforce, a small change in jobless rate means a lot.
As a reminder, the official target range for China GDP growth for the year was 6.0-6.5%, with tonight’s slightly disappointing data (vs +6.2%) confirming 2019’s +6.1% is the weakest annual expansion since 1990…
Source: Bloomberg
So, is bad news good news? (more non-economically-catalytic stimulus?)
How Chinese GDP is ‘created’ – We’re gonna need moar M2…
Source: Bloomberg
But even that is not working as even though M2 has been rising since 2017, GDP continues to slide, which means efficiency of debt is collapsing.
Seems like nothing really matters though as we note that 10Y Taiwan debt traded down to a 60bps yield – a record low – as the Taiwan stock market hit new record highs…
Source: Bloomberg
Congrats global central bankers.
Additional data released tonight shows that China’s birth rate dropped to a new record low (Birth rate fell to 10.48 births per 1,000 population in 2019 ). The shrinking working-age population and ageing society threaten to hurt growth in the long term.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/16/2020 – 21:10 -
- Robots Takeover Domino's New Supply Chain Center
Robots Takeover Domino’s New Supply Chain Center
Dominos has started the construction on a 59,000 square foot facility in Texas that will be the source of creating pizza dough for hundreds of regional stores, and there’s one major issue: the new high-tech supply chain center will be completely automated.
The new facility, located at 900 Igloo Road in Katy, Texas, will produce enough pizza dough for 300 stores across the region. The production of the dough will be entirely completed by robots and artificial intelligence systems for maximum productivity.
The company said because they will eliminate humans from the production line, the facility can create upwards of 20,000 trays of pizza dough balls per day.
The new facility will only create 85 jobs, as opposed to if there weren’t any robots, it would have created hundreds of jobs for the local community.
Dominos, like many other businesses, is rapidly integrating automation into its supply chain to fend off soaring labor costs that are compressing margins. The company has found it hard to pass through increased costs to broke consumers, so it has opted to introduce automation and the elimination of humans from its supply chains to keep pizza prices low.
The new automated supply chain facility will open in late 2020.
We recently reported how a Walmart Supercenter in Salem, New Hampshire, has been testing robots to collect grocery items for online order fulfillment.
Millions of low-wage and low-skill jobs will be displaced because of automation by 2030. The new wave of investing in automation for supply chains is clear that middle- to low-income workers will be displaced the hardest. The government will be faced with market imbalances and expanding wealth inequality, this could push society to the brink, as it will likely be the Federal Reserve in the coming years to underwrite People’s QE.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/16/2020 – 20:50 - Red Flag Nation: Anti-Gun Laws, Sanctuary Cities, & The Second Amendment
Red Flag Nation: Anti-Gun Laws, Sanctuary Cities, & The Second Amendment
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” – The Second Amendment to the US Constitution
We never learn.
In the right (or wrong) hands, benevolent plans can easily be put to malevolent purposes.
Even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be—and has been—perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation.
The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.
Mark my words: gun control legislation, especially in the form of red flag gun laws, which allow the police to remove guns from people suspected of being threats, will only add to the government’s power.
These laws, growing in popularity as a legislative means by which to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others, are yet another Trojan Horse, a stealth maneuver by the police state to gain greater power over an unsuspecting and largely gullible populace.
Seventeen states now have red flag laws on their books.
That number is growing.
As The Washington Post reports, these laws “allow a family member, roommate, beau, law enforcement officer or any type of medical professional to file a petition [with a court] asking that a person’s home be temporarily cleared of firearms. It doesn’t require a mental-health diagnosis or an arrest.”
In the midst of what feels like an epidemic of mass shootings (the statistics suggest otherwise), these gun confiscation laws—extreme risk protection order (ERPO) laws—may appease the fears of those who believe that fewer guns in the hands of the general populace will make our society safer.
Of course, it doesn’t always work that way.
Anything—knives, vehicles, planes, pressure cookers—can become a weapon when wielded with deadly intentions.
With these red flag gun laws, the stated intention is to disarm individuals who are potential threats… to “stop dangerous people before they act.”
While in theory it appears perfectly reasonable to want to disarm individuals who are clearly suicidal and/or pose an “immediate danger” to themselves or others, where the problem arises is when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police.
We’ve been down this road before.
Remember, this is the same government that uses the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.
This is the same government whose agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports using automated eyes and ears, social media, behavior sensing software, and citizen spies to identify potential threats.
This is the same government that keeps re-upping the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the military to detain American citizens with no access to friends, family or the courts if the government believes them to be a threat.
This is the same government that has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state.
For instance, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.
Moreover, as a New York Times editorial warns, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the police if you are afraid that the government is plotting to confiscate your firearms, if you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law, or if you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car.
Let that sink in a moment.
Now consider what happened in Maryland after a police officer attempted to “enforce” the state’s new red flag law, after it went into effect in 2018.
At 5 am on a Monday, two police officers showed up at 61-year-old Gary Willis’ house to serve him with a court order requiring that he surrender his guns. Willis answered the door holding a gun.
Mind you, in some states, merely answering the door holding a gun is enough to get you killed by police who have a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.
Willis initially set his gun aside while he spoke with the police. However, when the police attempted to serve him with the gun confiscation order, Willis reportedly became “irate” and picked up his gun again. At that point, a struggle ensued, causing the gun to go off. Although no one was harmed, one of the cops shot and killed Willis.
According to the Anne Arundel County police chief, the shooting was a sign that the red flag law is needed.
What the police can’t say with any certainty is what they prevented by shooting and killing Willis.
Therein lies the danger of these red flag laws, specifically, and pre-crime laws such as these generally where the burden of proof is reversed and you are guilty before you are given any chance to prove you are innocent.
Red flag gun laws merely push us that much closer towards a suspect society where everyone is potentially guilty of some crime or another and must be preemptively rendered harmless.
Where many Americans go wrong is in naively assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or harmful in order to be flagged and targeted for some form of intervention or detention.
In fact, U.S. police agencies have been working to identify and manage potential extremist “threats,” violent or otherwise, before they can become actual threats for some time now.
In fact, all you need to do these days to end up on a government watch list or be subjected to heightened scrutiny is use certain trigger words (like cloud, pork and pirates), surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, limp or stutter, drive a car, stay at a hotel, attend a political rally, express yourself on social media, appear mentally ill, serve in the military, disagree with a law enforcement official, call in sick to work, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, appear confused or nervous, fidget or whistle or smell bad, be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun (such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane), stare at a police officer, question government authority, appear to be pro-gun or pro-freedom, or generally live in the United States.
Be warned: once you get on such a government watch list—whether it’s a terrorist watch list, a mental health watch list, a dissident watch list, or a red flag gun watch list—there’s no clear-cut way to get off, whether or not you should actually be on there.
You will be tracked wherever you go.
You will be flagged as a potential threat and dealt with accordingly.
This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.
The government has been building its pre-crime, surveillance network in concert with fusion centers (of which there are 78 nationwide, with partners in the private sector and globally), data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics (in which life experiences alter one’s genetic makeup).
To that noxious mix, add in a proposal being considered by the Trump Administration for a new government agency HARPA (a healthcare counterpart to the Pentagon’s research and development arm DARPA) that will take the lead in identifying and targeting “signs” of mental illness or violent inclinations among the populace by using artificial intelligence to collect data from Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo and Google Home.
It’s the American police state’s take on the dystopian terrors foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick all rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package.
If you’re not scared yet, you should be.
Connect the dots.
Start with the powers amassed by the government under the USA Patriot Act, note the government’s ever-broadening definition of what it considers to be an “extremist,” then add in the government’s detention powers under NDAA, the National Security Agency’s far-reaching surveillance networks, and fusion centers that collect and share surveillance data between local, state and federal police agencies.
To that, add tens of thousands of armed, surveillance drones that will soon blanket American skies, facial recognition technology that will identify and track you wherever you go and whatever you do. And then to complete the picture, toss in the real-time crime centers being deployed in cities across the country, which will be attempting to “predict” crimes and identify criminals before they happen based on widespread surveillance, complex mathematical algorithms and prognostication programs.
Hopefully you’re starting to understand how easy we’ve made it for the government to identify, label, target, defuse and detain anyone it views as a potential threat for a variety of reasons that run the gamut from mental illness to having a military background to challenging its authority to just being on the government’s list of persona non grata.
This brings me back to those red flag gun laws.
In the short term, these gun confiscation laws may serve to temporarily delay or discourage those wishing to inflict violence on others, but it will not resolve whatever madness or hate or instability therein that causes someone to pull a trigger or launch a bomb or unleash violence on another.
Nor will these laws save us from government-instigated and directed violence at the hands of the American police state or the blowback from the war-drenched, violence-imbued, profit-driven military industrial complex, both of which remain largely overlooked and underestimated pieces of the discussion on gun violence in America.
In the long term, all these gun confiscation laws will do is ensure that when the police state finally cracks down, “we the people” are defenseless in the face of the government’s arsenal of weapons.
Now you can largely determine where a person will fall in the debate over gun control and the Second Amendment based on their view of government and the role it should play in our lives.
Those who want to see government as a benevolent parent looking out for our best interests tend to interpret the Second Amendment’s “militia” reference as applying only to the military.
To those who see the government as inherently corrupt, the Second Amendment is a means of ensuring that the populace will always have a way of defending themselves against threats to their freedoms.
And then there are those who view the government as neither good nor evil, but merely a powerful entity that, as Thomas Jefferson recognized, must be bound “down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” To this group, the right to bear arms is no different from any other right enshrined in the Constitution, to be safeguarded, exercised prudently and maintained.
Unfortunately, while these three divergent viewpoints continue to jockey for supremacy, the U.S. government has adopted a “do what I say, not what I do” mindset when it comes to Americans’ rights overall.
Nowhere is this double standard more evident than in the government’s attempts to arm itself to the teeth, all the while treating anyone who dares to legally own a gun, let alone use one, as suspicious and/or on the road to being an outlaw.
In Virginia, for instance, legislation has been introduced that would “require background checks on all firearms purchases, allow law enforcement to temporarily remove guns from individuals deemed a risk to themselves or others, let localities ban weapons from certain events and government buildings, and cap handgun purchases at one per month.”
To those who subscribe to George Orwell’s views about gun ownership (“That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer’s cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there”), these legislative attempts to regulate and control gun usage among the citizenry is nothing short of tyranny.
Not surprisingly, then, in Virginia and a growing number of states across the country, momentum is building for 2A “sanctuary” cities that adopt resolutions opposing any “unconstitutional restrictions” on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
Personally, I’m all for any attempt by the citizenry to nullify government actions that run afoul of the Constitution.
Certainly, there’s no denying that there is a huge double standard at play when it comes to the debate over guns in America: while the government continues to crack down on the citizenry’s right to own and bear arms (merely owning a gun can now get you treated as a suspect, searched, arrested, subjected to all manner of surveillance, shot at and killed despite ever having committed a crime), the government’s own efforts to militarize and weaponize its agencies and employees has reached epic proportions.
Ironically, while various state and federal agencies continue to adopt gun control legislation that includes bans on military-style assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and armor-piercing bullets, expanded background checks, and tougher gun-trafficking laws, local police agencies are being “gifted” military-grade weaponry and equipment designed for the battlefield.
“We the people” have been so focused on debating who or what is responsible for gun violence—the guns, the gun owners, or our violent culture—and whether the Second Amendment “allows” us to own guns that we’ve overlooked the most important and most consistent theme throughout the Constitution: the fact that it is not merely an enumeration of our rights but was intended to be a clear shackle on the government’s powers.
When considered in the context of prohibitions against the government, the Second Amendment reads as a clear rebuke against any attempt to restrict the citizenry’s gun ownership.
As such, it is as necessary an ingredient for maintaining that tenuous balance between the citizenry and their republic as any of the other amendments in the Bill of Rights, especially the right to freedom of speech, assembly, press, petition, security, and due process.
Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas understood this tension well.
“The Constitution is not neutral,” Douglas remarked, “It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.”
In this way, the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights in their entirety stand as a bulwark against a police state.
To our detriment, these rights have been steadily weakened, eroded and undermined in recent years. Yet without any one of them, including the Second Amendment right to own and bear arms, we are that much more vulnerable to the vagaries of out-of-control policemen, benevolent dictators, genuflecting politicians, and overly ambitious bureaucrats.
You can eliminate all of the guns, but it will not necessarily eliminate violence. Those same individuals sick enough to walk into an elementary school or a movie theater and open fire using a gun can and do wreak just as much havoc with homemade bombs made out of pressure cookers and a handful of knives.
It’s also not even a question of whether Americans need weapons to defend themselves against any overt threats to their safety or well-being, although a study by a Quinnipiac University economist indicates that less restrictive concealed gun-carry laws save lives, while gun control can endanger lives.
In fact, journalist Kevin Carson, writing for CounterPunch, suggests that prohibiting Americans from owning weapons would be as dangerously ineffective as Prohibition and the War on the Drugs:
[W]hat strict gun laws will do is take the level of police statism, lawlessness and general social pathology up a notch in the same way Prohibition and the Drug War have done. I’d expect a War on Guns to expand the volume of organized crime, and to empower criminal gangs fighting over control over the black market, in exactly the same way Prohibition did in the 1920s and strict drug laws have done since the 1980s. I’d expect it to lead to further erosion of Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure, further militarization of local police via SWAT teams, and further expansion of the squalid empire of civil forfeiture, perjured jailhouse snitch testimony, entrapment, planted evidence, and plea deal blackmail.
Truly, the debate over gun ownership in America is really a debate over who gets to call the shots and control the game.
In other words, it’s that same tug-of-war that keeps getting played out in every confrontation between the government and the citizenry over who gets to be the master and who is relegated to the part of the servant.
The Constitution is clear on this particular point, with its multitude of prohibitions on government overreach. As author Edmund A. Opitz observed in 1964:
No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words “no” and “not” employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights.
In a nutshell, then, the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms reflects not only a concern for one’s personal defense but serves as a check on the political power of the ruling authorities. It represents an implicit warning against governmental encroachments on one’s freedoms, the warning shot over the bow to discourage any unlawful violations of our persons or property. As such, it reinforces that necessary balance in the citizen-state relationship.
Certainly, dictators in past regimes have understood this principle only too well. As Adolf Hitler noted, “The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.”
It should come as no surprise, then, that starting in December 1935, Jews in Germany were prevented from obtaining shooting licenses, because authorities believed that to allow them to do so would “endanger the German population.”
In late 1938, special orders were delivered barring Jews from owning firearms, with the punishment for arms possession being twenty years in a concentration camp.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, it is a history that we should be wary of repeating.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/16/2020 – 20:30 - The US And Iran Are Furiously Trolling Each Other On The Chinese Internet
The US And Iran Are Furiously Trolling Each Other On The Chinese Internet
It looks the US and Iran are on the verge of an all-out meme war.
Over the past few days, as the aftermath of the killing of Iranian General Qasem Suileimani has faded from the headlines, the US and Iran have moved their feuding to a different, and extremely unexpected, venue: The Chinese Internet.
According to the New York Times, the Weibo accounts for the Iranian and American embassies in Beijing have been trading barbs on Weibo, a Chinese-language social-media site that’s often compared to the Chinese version of twitter.
The two sides have accused each other of inciting terrorism, and denounced one another as corrupt. The US embassy has accused Iran of “leaving bloodstains everywhere.” The Iranian embassy has denounced Suleimani’s killing and vowed to seek the end of “America’s evil forces in western Asia.”
The Iranian embassy has also been taking screenshots of tweets from its Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, and reposting them on Weibo with Chinese translations.
Most major western Internet platforms, including Google, FB and Twitter, are blocked from the Chinese Internet (though some can get around this using a VPN).
Typically, China’s censors block political content on the Internet for fear of allowing any information that might undermine the Communist Party from slipping through. But for whatever reason, they have so far been inclined to allow the US and Iran to go at it in full view of the Chinese public.
Instead, Chinese media have closely followed the spat, even going so far as to describe Weibo as “the new battlefield” between the US and Iran. The hashtag “Weibo fight” had been viewed nearly 2 million times as of Thursday.
Meanwhile, in the US, some social media companies, including Facebook, are removing posts and even entire accounts run by Iranians (who have access to Instagram), because of their pro-Iran content.
IRGC affiliated Tasnim News Agency (@Tasnimnews_Fa) has its Instagram profile removed following Soleimani’s assassination. Unclear if because of Soleimani’s terrorist designation and their coverage of him. Semi-official @FarsNews_Agency remains live, with commemorative posts. pic.twitter.com/nboZk1bLTu
— mahsa alimardani 🌒 (@maasalan) January 3, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Journalist in Iran reports @instagram posts removed: 1st of a Quronic verse commemorating martyrs, & 2nd a photo of Soleimani. Would be good to hear what @instagram‘s decisions are on these moderation policies. Soleimani content still persists on Instagram despite these removals pic.twitter.com/rhM5KXi5Db
— mahsa alimardani 🌒 (@maasalan) January 3, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Individual Iranians are also reporting their posts are being removed by Instagram if they’re related to Soleimani. Would be good to get a statement on @instagram on the logic behind these removals. https://t.co/9CDDBpxITZ https://t.co/fkBHLRvdwq pic.twitter.com/7xlAFTh7pM
— mahsa alimardani 🌒 (@maasalan) January 3, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
So, the US and Iran are having a debate on the Chinese Internet that Facebook and its fellow Silicon Valley titans have banned from the American Internet. Isn’t it ironic?
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/16/2020 – 20:10 - US Debt Got Us Hooked On Petrodollars… And On Saudi Arabia
US Debt Got Us Hooked On Petrodollars… And On Saudi Arabia
Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
The Iranian regime and the Saudi Arabian regime are longtime enemies, with both vying for control of the Persian Gulf region. Part of the conflict stems from religious differences – differences between Shia and Sunni muslim groups. But much of the conflict stems from mundane desires to establish regional dominance.
For more than forty years, however, Saudi Arabia has had one important ace in the hole in terms of its battle with Iran: the US’s continued support for the Saudi regime.
But why should the US continue to so robustly support this dictatorial regime? Certainly, these close relations can’t be due to any American support for democracy and human rights. The Saudi regime is one of the world’s most illiberal and anti-democratic regimes. Its ruling class has repeatedly been connected to Islamist terrorist groups, with Foreign Policy magazine last year calling Saudi Arabia “the beating heart of Wahhabism — the harsh, absolutist religious creed that helped seed the worldviews of al Qaeda and the Islamic State.”
Saudis Behind the Petrodollar
The answer lies in the fact the Saudi state is at the center of US efforts to maintain the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and to ensure global demand for US debt. The origins of this system go back decades.
By 1974, the US dollar was in a precarious position. In 1971, thanks to profligate spending on both war and domestic welfare programs, the US could no longer maintain a set global price for gold in line with the Bretton Woods system established in 1944. The value of the dollar in relation to gold fell as the supply of dollars increased as a byproduct of growing deficit spending. Foreign governments and investors began to lose faith in the dollar, and both Switzerland and France demanded gold in exchange for dollars as stipulated by Bretton Woods. If this continued, though, US gold holdings would soon be depleted. Moreover, the dollar was losing value against other currencies. In May of 1971, Germany left the Bretton Woods system and the dollar fell against the Deustsche Mark.
In response to these developments, Nixon announced the US would abandon the Bretton Woods system. The dollar began to float against other currencies.
Not surprisingly, devaluing the dollar did not restore confidence in the dollar. Moreover, the US had made no effort to rein in deficit spending. So the US needed to continue to find ways to sell government debt without driving up interest rates. That is, the US needed more buyers for its debt. Motivation for a fix grew even more after 1973 when the first oil shock further exacerbated the deficit-fueled price inflation Americans were enduring.
But by 1974, the enormous flood of dollars from the US into top-oil-exporter Saudi Arabia suggested a solution.
That year, Nixon sent new US Treasury Secretary William Simon to Saudi Arabia with a mission. As recounted by Andrea Wong at Bloomberg the goal was to
neutralize crude oil as an economic weapon [against the US] and find a way to persuade a hostile kingdom to finance America’s widening deficit with its newfound petrodollar wealth. …
The basic framework was strikingly simple. The U.S. would buy oil from Saudi Arabia and provide the kingdom military aid and equipment. In return, the Saudis would plow billions of their petrodollar revenue back into Treasuries and finance America’s spending.
From a public finance point of view, this appeared to be win-win. The Saudis would receive protection from geopolitical enemies, and the US would get a new place to unload large amounts of government debt. Moreover, the Saudis could park their dollars in relatively safe and reliable investments in the United States. This became known as “petrodollar recycling.” By spending on oil, the US — and other oil importers, who were now required to use dollars — was creating new demand for US debt and US dollars.
This dollar agreement wasn’t limited to Saudi Arabia either. Since Saudi Arabia dominated the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the dollar deal was extended to OPEC overall which meant the dollar became the preferred currency for oil purchases worldwide.
This scheme assured the dollar’s place as a currency of immense global importance. This was especially important during the 1970s and early 1980s. After all, up until the early 1980s, OPEC enjoyed 50-percent market share in the oil trade. Thanks to the second oil shock, however, much of the world began searching for a wide variety of ways to decrease dependency on oil. By the mid 1980s, OPEC’s share had decreased to less than one-third.
Today, Saudi Arabia ranks behind both Russia and the United States in terms of oil production. As of 2019, OPEC’s share remains around 30 percent. This has lessened the role of the petrodollar compared to the heady days of the 1970s. But the importance of the petrodollar is certainly not destroyed.
We can see the ongoing importance of the petrodollar in US foreign policy which had continued to antagonize and threaten any major oil-exporting state that moves toward ending its reliance on dollars.
As noted by Matthew Hatfield in the Harvard Political Review, it is not likely a mere coincidence that especially belligerent US foreign policy has been applied to the Iraqi, Libyan, and Iranian regimes. Hatfield writes :
In 2000, Saddam Hussein, then-president of Iraq, announced that Iraq was moving to sell its oil in euros instead of dollars.
Following 9/11, the United States invaded Iraq, deposed Saddam Hussein, and converted Iraqi oil sales back to the U.S. dollar.
This exact pattern was repeated with Muammar Gaddafi when he attempted to create a unified African currency backed by Libyan gold reserves to to sell African oil . Shortly after his announcement, rebels armed by the US government and allies overthrew the dictator and his regime. After his death, the idea that African oil would be sold on something other than the dollar quickly died out.
Other regimes that have called for abandoning the petrodollar include Iran and Venezuela. The US has called for regime change in both these countries.
Oil Exporters Control US Assets
Threats can be leveled in both directions, however. Last year, for example, Saudi Arabia threatened “to sell its oil in currencies other than the dollar” if Washington “passes a bill exposing OPEC members to U.S. antitrust lawsuits.” That is, the Saudi regime is aware that it has at least some leverage with the US because of the Saudi position at the center of the petrodollar system.
Saudi Arabia is one of few states that can even feign to call the US’s bluff on matters such as these. As has been made abundantly clear by US policy in recent decades, the US is more than willing to invade foreign countries that run afoul of the petrodollar system.
In the case of Saudi Arabia, however, the Kingdom’s position as an Iran antagonist — and as the world’s third-largest oil exporter — means the US is likely to avoid unnecessary conflict.
Moreover, it is likely that Saudi holdings of US debt and other assets are significant. When the Saudis make threats, this implicitly also “include[s] liquidating the kingdom’s holdings in the United States.” As Bloomberg reported, Saudi Arabia has also “warned it would start selling as much as $750 billion in Treasuries and other assets if Congress passes a bill allowing the kingdom to be held liable in U.S. courts for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.”
We often hear about how China and Japan hold a lot of US debt, and therefore hold some leverage over the US because of this. (The problem here is that were foreigners to dump US assets, they would drop in price. If US debt drops in price, then the the debt must increase in yield, which means the US must then pay more interest on its debt.) But there is good reason to believe Saudi Arabia is a major holder as well. It is difficult, however, to keep track of how large these holdings are because the Saudi regime has worked closely with the US regime to keep Saudi purchases of American assets secret. When the Treasury reports on foreign holders of US debt, Saudi Arabia is folded in with several other nations to hide the precise nature of Saudi purchases. Nevertheless, as Wong contends, the Saudi regime is “one of America’s largest foreign creditors.”
The Problem Grows as US Debt Grows
All else being equal, the US should be growing less dependent on foreign holders of debt. This should especially be true of Saudi and OPEC-held debt since the global role of OPEC and the Saudis have been diminishing in terms of global share.
But all else isn’t equal and the US has been piling on ever larger amounts of debt in recent years. In 2019, for example, the annual deficit topped one trillion. In a past, less profligate age, this sort of debt creation would be reserved only for wartime or a period of economic depression. Today, however, this immense growth in debt levels makes the US regime more sensitive to changes in demand for US debt, and this has made the US regime ever more reliant on foreign demand for both US debt and for US dollars. That is, in order to avoid a crisis, the US must ensure that interest rates remain low, and that foreigners want to acquire both US dollars and US debt.
Were petrodollars and petrodollar recycling to disappear, this would have a two-fold effect on US government finances: a sizable decline in petrodollar recycling would put significant upward pressure on interest rates. The result would be a budget crisis for the US government as it had to devote ever larger amounts of the federal budget to payments on the debt. (The other option would be to have the US’s central bank monetize the debt by purchasing ever-larger amounts of US debt to make up for a lack of foreign demand. This would lead to growing price inflation.)
Moreover, if participants began to exit the petrodollar system (and, say, sell oil in euros instead) demand for dollars would drop, exacerbating any scenarios in which the central bank is monetizing the debt. This would also generally contribute to greater price inflation as fewer dollars are sucked out of the US by foreign holders.
The result could be ongoing declines in government spending on services, and growing price inflation. The US regime’s ability to finance its debt would decline significantly, and the US would need to pull back on military commitments, pensions, and more. Either that, or keep spending at the same rate and face an inflationary spiral.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/16/2020 – 19:50 - Federal Watchdog Finds Trump Admin Illegally Withheld Assistance From Ukraine
Federal Watchdog Finds Trump Admin Illegally Withheld Assistance From Ukraine
The nation’s top watchdog has concluded that the White House violated federal law when it withheld nearly $400 million in congressionally authorized US aid last year.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Trump administration violated the Impoundment Control Act (ICA), which “does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” according to a Thursday report.
Of note, the GAO has reached similar conclusions against both Bush administrations and the Clinton administration. In December of 2018, the agency concluded that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) withheld $95 million from the Coast Guard – funds which were eventually released.
Congressional Democrats have accused Trump of using the withheld aid in a quid-pro-quo in exchange for investigations into Joe Biden and his son Hunter, as well as matters related to the 2016 US election. While House investigators were unable to prove that the funds were used as leverage – including whether Trump directly gave an order to do so, Trump was impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress on December 18.
The White House claims its Office of Management and Budget (OMB) paused the funds over corruption concerns. That said, emails released in late December reveal that a senior OMB official directed the Department of Defense to pause the funds less than two hours after a July 25 call between Trump and Ukraine’s new President, Volodomyr Zelensky.
The GAO, however, concluded that “OMB withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act.”
Trump has attacked the impeachment charges as politically motivated. White House budget officials have defended their power to stop the money from being given to the Defense Department, arguing both congressional lawmakers and executive branch officials routinely demand delays on funding already signed into law.
The report brings new scrutiny to a chain of events at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget last year. When top White House officials gave directives to the Pentagon to withhold aid for Ukraine, some OMB officials objected, warning the halt could be improper. At least two officials resigned, in part over concerns about the Ukraine money. –Washington Post
Trump and the White House have vehemently denied wrongdoing.
Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) who requested the GAO report, tweeted on Thursday: “This bombshell legal opinion from the independent @USGAO demonstrates, without a doubt, that the Trump Administration illegally withheld assistance from Ukraine and the public evidence shows that the president himself ordered this illegal act.”
This bombshell legal opinion from the independent @USGAO demonstrates, without a doubt, that the Trump Administration illegally withheld assistance from Ukraine and the public evidence shows that the president himself ordered this illegal act. pic.twitter.com/bkwyQ4Vk3K
— Senator Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) January 16, 2020
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/16/2020 – 19:31 - China's Mobile Phone Shipments Plunge 6.2% In 2019
China’s Mobile Phone Shipments Plunge 6.2% In 2019
The Chinese economy continues to slow with new data via the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) that shows the country’s mobile phone market suffered its worst month in nearly one year as phone shipments plunged 14.7% in December, contributing to a full-year 6.2% decline, reported Xinhua News Agency.
Full-year phone shipments totaled 389 million, with at least 90% were from domestic brands including Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi, according to CAICT.
Shipments of domestic brands dropped 17.4% Y/Y in December. Apple bucked the trend in China last month, recorded an 18% increase.
Apple shipped 3.2 million iPhones in China in December, CAICT said, adding that it was up from 2.7 million a year earlier.
Chinese sales of iPhones peaked in 2015 due to longer upgrade cycles and increased domestic competition.
The trade war has also sparked patriotism in the country, and more citizens are opting for domestic phone brands than foreign ones.
In 3Q19, Huawei controlled 42% of all new phone shipments in China, according to research firm IDC.
Despite a continued slowdown in the overall phone industry, 5G phone shipments continued to increase, accounting for 17% of all phones shipped last month.
Sluggish phone shipments in China is another warning that the global economy is stuck in a low growth period.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/16/2020 – 19:30 - DoJ Begins Second Probe Into Comey's History Of Leaking Classified Intel
DoJ Begins Second Probe Into Comey’s History Of Leaking Classified Intel
The New York Times just published a bombshell report that’s faintly reminiscent of the scoops that the Liberal paper of record used to publish during the spring and summer of 2017, when the Mueller probe was in its infancy.
Except this time, instead of the the leak focusing on alleged wrongdoing by President Trump and his inner circle, the NYT is focusing on former FBI Director James Comey, who has increasingly been taken to task by the mainstream press in recent months for his botched handling of both the Clinton investigation and the origins of the probe in Russian interference (remember that?).
According to veteran NYT reporter Adam Goldman (a reporter who won a Pulitzer in 2018 for his work bolstering the Russian interference narrative), federal prosecutors have launched an investigation into an earlier incident of leaking by former FBI Director James Comey.
This leak, which involves a classified information about Russian intelligence, allegedly surfaced in the Washington Post and NYT some time during 2017.
A report published in September by the DoJ’s inspector general found that the fired FBI Director James Comey leaked sensitive law enforcement material in the Trump-Russia investigation. Doing so set a “dangerous example” for the bureau’s other employees, Inspector General Michael Horowitz wrote. Comey’s former No. 2 man, Andrew McCabe, was also fired for leaking, and is also under investigation.
Whatever this document was (the NYT claims it was also mentioned in a book by James Stewart published last fall), it apparently played a key role in Comey’s decision to cut the DoJ out of his announcement that the FBI wouldn’t be pursuing charges against Hillary Clinton in the email scandal. Furthermore, it was allegedly obtained by Dutch Intelligence operatives, before being handed over to the US. The NYT says the document was “one of the key factors” that drove Comey’s decision to give Hillary a pass.
The latest investigation involves material that Dutch intelligence operatives siphoned off Russian computers and provided to the United States government. The information included a Russian analysis of what appeared to be an email exchange during the 2016 presidential campaign between Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida who was also the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee at the time, and Leonard Benardo, an official with the Open Society Foundations, a democracy-promoting organization whose founder, George Soros, has long been a target of the far right.
In the email, Ms. Wasserman Schultz suggested that then-Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch would make sure that Mrs. Clinton would not be prosecuted in the email case. Both Ms. Wasserman Schultz and Mr. Benardo have denied being in contact, suggesting the document was meant to be Russian disinformation.
That document was one of the key factors that drove Mr. Comey to hold a news conference in July 2016 announcing that investigators would recommend no charges against Mrs. Clinton. Typically, senior Justice Department officials would decide how to proceed in such a high-profile case, but Mr. Comey was concerned that if Ms. Lynch played a central role in deciding whether to charge Mrs. Clinton, Russia could leak the email.
Of course, the NYT suggests that the investigation might be politically motivated, but offers no other evidence to support this claim than the “suspicious” timing (per NYT, the DoJ typically doesn’t investigate years-old leaks).
The timing of the investigation could raise questions about whether it was motivated at least in part by politics. Prosecutors and F.B.I. agents typically investigate leaks of classified information around the time they appear in the news media, not years later. And the inquiry is the latest politically sensitive matter undertaken by the United States attorney’s office in Washington, which is also conducting an investigation of Mr. Comey’s former deputy, Andrew G. McCabe, that has been plagued by problems.
Law enforcement officials are scrutinizing at least two news articles about the F.B.I. and Mr. Comey, published in The New York Times and The Washington Post in 2017, that mentioned the Russian government document, according to the people familiar with the investigation. Hackers working for Dutch intelligence officials obtained the document and provided it to the F.B.I., and both its existence and the collection of it were highly classified secrets, the people said.
The document played a key role in Mr. Comey’s decision to sideline the Justice Department and announce in July 2016 that the F.B.I. would not recommend that Hillary Clinton face charges in her use of a private email server to conduct government business while secretary of state.
It’s believed that the investigation began in recent months, but it’s unclear whether a grand jury has been impaneled, or how many witness have been interviewed.
Comey has already been investigated by federal prosecutors in NY for leaking: He infamously turned over a memo to personal friend Daniel Richman with the explicit intention of getting it to an NYT reporter. That document was later determined to be classified, though prosecutors declined to charge Comey (and instead let the IG handle it).
But what this probe shows is that Comey has a history of leaking that isn’t Trump-specific. The Clinton email investigation began long before Trump secured the Republican nomination.
It could be the straw that finally wrecks whatever is left of Comey’s credibility in the eyes of the liberal press.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/16/2020 – 19:11 - Ukraine Launches Criminal Probe Into 'Illegal Surveillance' Of American Ambassador Fired By Trump
Ukraine Launches Criminal Probe Into ‘Illegal Surveillance’ Of American Ambassador Fired By Trump
The first domino in the House Dems’ plan to push moderate Republicans to support a decision to call witnesses during President Trump’s impeachment trial has just fallen.
As we reported earlier this week, House Dems released a cache of notes and texts from former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, who has been accused of funneling foreign money to the Trump campaign.
Text messages released from March 2019 between Parnas and Robert Hyde, a Connecticut resident who is planning a Congressional run on the Republican ticket, appear to shed light on a plot to try and oust former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich. In the conversation, the two discussed rumors that Yovanovich was being protected by the Kremlin (how’s that for Russian influence?). They also allegedly discussed the ambassador’s whereabouts, and how they had a person on the “inside” to keep tabs on her.
Yovanovich was eventually pushed out, and now Ukraine has opened a criminal case into the possibility of illegal surveillance of Yovanovitch during her time as ambassador, according to a release from the Ukrainian Interior Ministry. Yovanovitch, who provided evidence to the House, claimed she was spied on before being fired by President Trump, according to the Independent.
Keep in mind: many of the handwritten notes released yesterday were unverified and undated, though Dems allege they were written by Parnas.
But that didn’t stop Yovanovitch’s lawyer from calling for an investigation after the notes and texts allegedly suggested that she was being watched.
However, to many people, the behavior being described is no different from having an office mole who feeds information about employees to the boss. That being said, we’re sure the Dems will use this as an excuse to revive the Russian interference narrative.
Of course, when the Dems inevitably push to call Parnas as a witness, Republicans can counter with a totally legitimate political quid pro quo: Calling Parnas as a witness in exchange for calling Hunter Biden.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/16/2020 – 19:11
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